PRICK UP YOUR EARS

Director Stephen Frears’ film “Prick Up Your Ears” — that last word an anagram for “arse” — is getting a 30th anniversary re-release in a restored edition. The weeklong run provides a rare opportunity to see this biopic of the late gay playwright Joe Orton on the big screen.

The film was scripted by another gay playwright, Alan Bennett, based on John Lahr’s biography, which drew on Orton’s diaries. It opens with neighbors and police discovering the bodies of Orton (Gary Oldman) and his lover Kenneth Halliwell (Alfred Molina), and ends, in 1967, with Halliwell murdering Orton before he commits suicide. The story in between toggles back and forth between Orton’s life and present-day scenes of Lahr (Wallace Shawn) interviewing Orton’s agent, Peggy Ramsay (Vanessa Redgrave), who has stolen Orton’s diaries from the crime scene.

As Peggy describes Orton upon first meeting him, she says he had “confidence and charm.” As Orton, Oldman delivers both qualities with notable élan. It is obvious why every man and woman in the film is attracted to him; he’s fetchingly sexy in his white T-shirt, leather jacket, jeans, and jaunty cap. That he sports a seductive, devilish grin when he is amused or is getting away with something naughty only adds to his appealing insouciance. “Prick Up Your Ears” captures very well the symbiotic relationship that develops between the lovers. Frears plays up the tensions between Joe and Kenneth throughout the film, as their arguments become increasingly nasty. Joe is harsh toward the insecure but supportive Kenneth, at times denying him glory and sex, which provokes Kenneth to angry outbursts. But Kenneth largely suffers Joe’s abuse — likely because he is terrified of losing him. That homosexuality remained illegal and very much underground in 1960s Britain may have contributed to Kenneth’s willingness to stay with a cruel companion rather than have none at all.

“Prick Up Your Ears” may shock less than viewers might expect given the gruesome facts of the story, but the film’s extraordinary writing, directing, and acting still hold up 30 years later.

(Gary M. Kramer, gaycitynews.com)